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Welsh Star Wars fan saves Luke Skywalker's home

A local contractor was brought along to assess what needed to be done Credit: Mark Dermul

It's not quite a galaxy far far away, but it is still a long way from home. Star Wars fan and author Terry Cooper travelled from Cardiff to Tunisia - to help rebuild Luke Skywalker's house.

In the films, the Lars Homestead was where Skywalker spent his childhood with his uncle and aunt, before leaving to join the Rebel Alliance. The scenes were filmed in the middle of the desert, on the dry salt lake flats of Tunisia. But once filming was over, the site was left to deteriorate.

The 'igloo' was rebuilt in 2000 for 'Episode II: Attack of the Clones', but had suffered severe damage since.

On the 35th anniversary of the first Star Wars film - 'Episode IV: A New Hope' - a team of six flew out to the iconic location to begin work. They had just six days to return the igloo like structure to its former glory; rebuilding walls and plastering the outside.

Above is a video of the poor condition the structure was left in.

425 'saviours' contributed money via the team's website in order to raise the $10,000 needed to complete the project.

The team battled the midday heat of the desert to get the job done. But the project was eventually completed, and there was even time to recreate scenes from the film for themselves.

The Lars homestead 'igloo' and a landspeeder. Credit: Mark Dermul

It's the most iconic scene of all six Star Wars movies where Luke goes out in the evening and leaves his house just to look over the horizon to that music.

Knowing that that place does exist, in a real place on earth that's free to go and see - it's not a theme park or anything like that - it's something that we thought that it'll be a shame if it were to end up as just a faceless ditch in the desert.

I hope my kids will go back and see it. I hope everyone else will take time to go out and see what we've done. Hopefully, we'll keep it restored

– Terry Cooper

The team kept a video diary of their Tunisian adventure.

ITV Wales reporter Nicola Hendy went along to meet Terry and find out exactly why he wanted to rebuild the Lars Homestead